For The Uninspired Woman: The event organiser of a “Dark skin” women of colour female empowering event rejected me from buying a ticket because I was not dark enough to attend the event. In fact it would defeat the purpose of the event. Initially I was really shocked because I personally don’t consider myself as a “Light Skin” Woman. I know I may not be the darkest girl on the spectrum but regardless it made me question whether we as Black people are the cause of keeping colorism alive ??

BEING A BLACK WOMAN

In a previous post I explain what it’s like to be a Black Woman. All Black women have a similar struggle because society deems us as less valuable than any other race. This is not just a problem in the United States but all over the world including Great Britain. The Media has had a huge impact on the assassination of The Black Womans character and the way in which she is viewed.

Unfortunately Black women are portrayed in a negative light on a majority of platforms. We are portrayed as ghetto, angry, loud and full of attitude. Even the beauty world recently decided to include darker shades of foundation for women of colour. Five years ago that didn’t exist, can you imagine what type of message that sends to women of colour who can’t find their shade of foundation in beauty stores or online ??

Answer: We don’t think you’re beautiful, so we don’t need to make products for you.

Award shows like BET and Black girls rock gives Black people the opportunity to not only showcase their talents but be rewarded and celebrated for them.

It creates segregation when we start having events for certain shades of our race. Now don’t get me wrong I do believe that darker skin women need to be uplifted more especially because colorism does exist. However having a certain shade only event just perpetuates the race-based discrimination.

(The next day I was asked to be a volunteer at the event ?? I’ guess i’m not dark enough to attend but I can volunteer ?????– Sounds like slave mentality ?? )

How can we diminish colorism ?

In order to diminish colorism we need to come together as Black people and have an in-depth conversation about how we view ourselves as individuals. That means putting light skin, brown skin and darker skin people in one room and squashing the stereotypes of Light skin people think they’re too nice and dark skin people are unattractive. We need to be open to discussing our struggles and how colorism has effected us because we are all victims of it. Some of us our guilty of encourage the separation. But we need to be open, understanding and willing to forgive.

Colorism was forced upon us with the illusion that the slaves in the house were treated better. Which is all down to perception because everyone’s experience is different. As an individual living on this earth in 2018, I can’t say every slave in a house was treated better. Every single person had a different experience back then. Being Raped in a house and getting whipped whilst picking cotton doesn’t sound like luxury in any capacity. But they convinced us of this and separated us and in 2018 a lot of us are still fighting this battle.

The Color spectrum

I am a brown skin woman who becomes very dark in the summer and very light during the winter.

When I look at the above I see a bunch of stunning Black women. Yes we all have different shades and im not putting the blame on us for the existence of colorism but we sure can eliminate it. One way we can do better is to stop generalizing other peoples experiences and actually listen to their experiences.

Take a look at the series I created for Black History Month called: Her Story. This episode is about colorism.

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